In updates:
I'm not as organized with study plans as I used to be and honestly that won't change for a while. That said, I do have 2 challenges I'm trying for myself. I don't know if I'll accomplish them, but just the fact I'm Trying to is getting me to study more. So we'll see where I am in April on these.
1. Listening through Japanese Fluency 1-3 Glossika files
I'm on file 10 out of 104 in Japanese 1. Then there's 104 files in each of the other two files. On the upside? I think even in such a small amount of files listened to so far, in some ways these files have already covered more than what i ever managed to hear in Japanese Pimsleur 1. I think I've heard at least 100 words so far, and a lot of grammar examples in sentence patterns (maybe 20? Maybe 30). I think JapaneseAudioLessons.com's 36 lessons probably cover grammar faster, but I'm not sure if they cover as much vocab as Glossika aims for (which is 3000 sentences, and 2000-3000 words). They might, but I don't know for sure. Also on the upside - the glossika files are easy to listen to, I can pick up stuff from them even when I'm working too or driving or playing games. So it should be easier to stick to using them ToT (just like it was for Chinese Spoonfed audio files).
My goal right now is to keep listening until I finish. In an effort not to give up ToT I'd like to be through the first module Japanese 1 by the end of April. But honestly if it takes longer thats fine. I just want to try to focus on progressing through it for as long as i can. I think it's an easy way right now for me to reinforce what I know, learn more words in a structured way (Clozemaster is a good backup but isn't as structured), improve my listening comprehension (which will make learning from Clozemaster audio later less intensive, learning from anything else where I need quick listening skill), get used to understanding the things I know faster (lately I've tried a bit of Japanese immersion and it's so Clear to me that 50% of my comprehension issues are a speed problem... I'm failing to comprehend a lot of stuff I've studied and just don't recognize instantly). If and when I get bored, I plan to either immerse in video games again or watch lets plays, or try listening reading method.
I've been watching a few Japanese lets plays on YouTube (and found Final Fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts in Japanese on there). And I think with things like that, which I'm already familiar with in English, I can just enjoy and pick up some stuff. But I'd like to get my listening comprehension to a better level before making immersion my only study plan for a while lol. Because right now so much I could be reinforcing is going over my head.
I think audio focused Japanese study still is suiting me, like it was last summer. Reading is still mostly Stronger as a skill despite me not purposely trying to study it so much. I think it's because written Japanese has clearer grammar distinctions for me, and the Kanji are like "similar cognates" enough of the time they help me much more than when I'm just hearing a word. So I'm going to continue most purposeful study plans using audio. After I'm sick of glossika, like I said I want to probably use mainly lets plays with audio or listening resding method (so I can hear sound constantly with all the new words). One of my biggest problems with picking up Japanese words is the all kana words, and the Kanji pronunciations.
2. Reading through Zhenhun. With audio playing (optional).
In my dream world I finish this in 2 weeks. In A Nice situation, I finish this in a month. Realistically? I'm hoping I just get further into the novel before giving up than last time lol.
I genuinely think if I just read MORE quantity wise, my reading skill will get better - reading speed, words I learn etc. And I just really want to read it! I was reading my print version, which has extra scenes I love, and I was figuring out plenty of words from context even if I didn't get every detail.
I started reading the webnovel version in my ebook reader Moonreader (although Idiom or Pleco would also work), because it will play the audio aloud as I read. It's helping me read faster instead of dwelling on a hard portion, which is nice. It's also making me recognize what I know faster since I've got less time to recognize it before the audio moves on. I'm getting somewhat less time to figure out new words, but honestly a majority of unknown words priest uses get clarified by the context after a couple paragraphs if they're important. Like I'd forgotten a few words that I just saw enough to remember again. And then the obvious benefit - audio is making me hear all the hanzi pronunciations I forgot and the pronunciations for new ones (like I forgot 拐 was guai until I kept hearing it, I kept guessing it was ling). I think using the audio is making me read faster ultimately (and more well rounded study since I've got visual text and audio listening) even though it means I have to set myself up to do it with more effort.
Anyway! Surprisingly Moonreader app is making me more motivated to read. Why? This:
At the bottom of the page it shows me how many digital pages I've read, and the percentage I've read. I restarted reading yesterday, and today I'm at 50/901 pages, 5.3% read. Just this amount of detail is really motivating for me ToT. Honestly I think it's because it shows me how far ive come, and helps me plan how long it will realistically take. 5% took me about 2 hours. So like. 40 hours to finish this at my reading pace. Oh god. But also? Hey, on the other hand?! Now I know if I just spend 2 hours a day I could finish this in 20 days. If I had some days I got really into it, I could maybe finish faster. I very much have the Urge to see 10% down there lol. And that urge to keep progressing is helping me ignore my urge to pause and re-read the vague parts.
I read a guy's advice on improving in another language and they said to read a webnovel (300 pages) in 2 weeks. Ad one of your first novels. And try not to take longer. And while that is a brutal goal for a beginner, I do agree the more you read the easier it gets and the quicker it gets. When I read xiao wangzi it took me 2 weeks for those under 100 pages. But I did make myself finish it in a couple weeks. Now my reading level is higher, and I can probably get myself to finish at least 300 pages of this in 2 weeks. ToT my reading level is probably decent enough to manage that. That's only 1/3 of guardian tho lol (clearly that guy wasn't reading chinese webnovels).
I saw another person who really motivated me to just wanr to read MORE:
Tarvos basically did what I did for French. But way better than I did (more extensive reading and harder material). And it clearly worked. And I remember it worked for me too - read and follow the main idea, don't worry about what you can't comprehend or what is vague. Then somehow the next book is a bit easier. Then later you go back and read at a level that used to be challenging and you comprehend way more.
I know that in chinese at least (and French ToT) I know enough words that I do not need to stop and look words up to keep reading. I can follow the main plot, and so if Mt goals extensive reading then I just have to DO IT. Just read 2000 pages lol! And the more pages I get through, I know the easier it will get later on! I just need to push through the initial hurdle and READ MORE ToT.
I am going to be so overjoyed and shocked later if I push through a bunch of a novel now, and later find I understand more and read faster.
I already see results of that, from back when I made myself read like 60 chapters of a pingxie fic last summer lol! Now, going back to stuff at that level? I open up tsomd or SCI something brand new to me and realize I can also follow the main overall idea without a dictionary now. Whereas I used to usually need to look up some words in the first chapters of new stories just to pick up some key genre words and recognize names. But clearly my reading level increased from just reading more last time. Now some old stories I could understand okay generally without a dictationary I now follow almost all details (tamendegushi, dmbj, saye). And stuff I needed to do some initial prep work for, I could now just read extensively and follow the main idea, if I wanted. I'd probably get used to them if I just Kept Reading. So like... I definitely think... I just need to push through that awkward feeling of not quite full comprehension, and just read MORE. ToT
And. First: I know that advice works... I know I've just Read MORE before, then later I just Could read and comprehend more easier. Second: I know more pages is just what's needed to improve reading speed... ;-; I remember reading once an article which suggested 8k-10k words to get a native like reading speed and comprehension of vocab. More pages for some languages, but that was the basic idea. And tbh it sounds logical to me, because I'm sure I read that much in my native language before I comprehended novels like I do as an adult.
An FYI to anyone trying to learn Chinese by extensive reading: I can confirm it will work. At minimum I would recommend you either start with graded readers at your level, or else familiarize yourself with 2000 common words before starting (you don't need them memorized but you should probably know 1000 common words decently and fairly certainly know what they are if you see them, recognize and be able to guess 1000 more, and recognize at least 1200 hanzi enough to guess pinyin to look up in a dictionary on occasion). If you start with intensive reading, you can start with less vocab knowledge. If you plan on extensive reading, at least vaguely recognizing 2000 words will be enough to find some webnovels you'll be able to follow the main idea of without a dictionary (and many manhua). So about 6 months - 1.5 years into study (depending on how fast you study vocab) or earlier if you start with graded readers (theres some graded readers you could probably start within a few months of starting to study, then you can continue fairly comfortably with graded readers until you learn 1000 hanzi or more, some amount more vocab, and are up for looking for webnovels). There's a lot of nice graded readers made from 100 hanzi, to 2000 hanzi. From 100 unique words, to 3000 unique words (I think some even go up to 5000 unique words for chinese). But once you're vaguely familiar with 2000 common words? You know enough to start reading some webnovels extensively, if you're up for it.
And it will work. You will gradually pick up more from context. (As usual, yes, intensive reading and/or SRS flashcards will help you pick up vocab faster, but you'll gradually improve too just from the extensive reading). You will gradually increase your grammar understanding, vocab, reading speed, ans reading comprehension.
Only things I needed to be ready to learn from extensively reading? 1. Vaguely familiar with 1500 common words (but I'd recommend someone less eager than me prep with 2000 words so they run into less unknowns to annoy them). 2. Vague knowledge of the Chinese radicals (skills like being able to go 拐 is the hand and the 另 hanzi, and break down new hanzi you see into recognizable components, will help you guess pinyin to look up when needed based on one of the building blocks pinyins, and help you guess the meaning of new hanzi - 拐 shows up in abduct/turn/corner and thinking of it as hand-another like another's hand giving you directions to turn, another's hands grabbing to abduct, another's hand reaching around a 拐角 corner etc will help you remember the new hanzi. It is beneficial to know beforehand about radicals, how sometimes one hints pronunciation and one hints meaning). 3. Ability to follow the bare minimum main idea of what's going on in the story. If you can't even do thar, the reading material is too difficult. If you can follow the basic main idea, it's okay even if a TON of details are incomprehensible or vague, because you comprehend enough context to gradually keep picking up more. (Although the More you understand the less effort it will take you to pick up more from context). So say you're reading Alice in Wonderland - if you can grasp "there's a girl Alice, there's a rabbit she interacts somehow with, she follows it and ends up in a new place" then congrats you understand enough of chapter 1 to read it extensively. You could also understand more like "alice was bored, the rabbit is late, Alice falls down a hole, Alice is sad as she falls." But even just the bare minimum is enough. The more you understand of the basic main idea, the easier a read it will be. When I started reading in French a ton of stuff I only followed the basic main idea, and I just kept reading extensively and things got easier lol. (And if you're impatient or want to read intensively, feel free to read these less comprehensive things with some word look up to speed up how fast you learn new vocab, until you're sick of looking up vocab and just want to read extensively again - I kept reading intensively until I got to about 2000 known words, and from 1000-2000 words in chinese I kept switching between extensive and then intensive to pick up a few hundred words faster).
4. Optional - Some prior grammar knowledge like reading a grammar guide or having some class/textbook prep etc (not necessary, but it helps seeing a sentence and having some vague guess what's a noun verb adjective past tense present future negative positive etc even if there's still complex grammar you don't get yet).
I read on the forum discussions about getting into extensive reading, the question "well thar worked with Swedish, but would a language like chinese take more prep work?" Because chinese requires hanzi recognition, word and phrase parsing without spaces, and less cognates. And how to pronounce the words you're picking up.
The person above prepped with FSI, and had the benefit of cognates. But I'd still imagine that added up to 1000-2000 words basis of knowledge and some grammar basics before they started learning from reading extensively. Which was about the same amount of prep work I had for chinese. And extensively reading in chinese worked fine for me with that much prior knowledge. So I think extensive resding is very doable at that level in chinese.
How I'd address the concerns:
1. Hanzi. If you know around 1000 and have some familiarity with radicals, picking up hanzi is not too bad when reading extensively. Pick graded readers if you want less unknown hanzi per page, and as you gradually pick up more hanzi comprehension from context you will find you stop running into as many critical unknown ones. Also hanzi pickup is tied in with vocab pick up. You'll learn 方向 as direction then 方向盘 as steering wheel (direction wheel) and realize 方 is often direction related, 盘 is often a circle shape thing then see 盘子 as plate then see 椅子 as chair and realize 子 is part of some nouns. You'll also see 椅子 and realize 椅 it's the tree wood radical and then the yi part like in 倚 for a chair (a sometimes wood thing pronounced yi). Or hug 抱, you see the the sound from 包 bao like bread 包子 and the hand radical. A word maybe with pinyin bao that has to do with hands and is someone touching someone. Once you know enough hanzi, you start to remember new hanzi easier as built of components you've seen before. Same applies to new words - you know one word with a hanzi, then see a new word with that hanzi, and either its 2 hanzi you know in a new combo or only 1 new unknown hanzi. But you have some building blocks to guess the new words. You can't rely on cognates like with English to French, but as you learn more hanzi they help you guess words like cognate similarities do. If too many unknown hanzi keep popping up and it's driving you up a wall? Move to graded readers for a while until you pick up more (so the book is made to teach you them) or read intensively for a while until the remaining unknown hanzi get easier to handle (that happened for me after knowing about 1500 hanzi and finally new unknown hanzi i couldnt fathom at all stopped popping up so much).
2. Word boundaries. Genuinely, just read Chinese more. Start with graded readers so the grammar isn't confusing you as much. Read more. It gets fairly natural to parse Chinese word/phrase boundaries after enough practice. Grammar constructions and function words and time phrases separate phrases quite clearly if you recognize 有 没有 了 以后 以前 就是 的 得 地 那个 那些 来 会 在 过了 过 一会 去. And they're all common so you'll pick them up soon. Chinese words are usually 1 character (if super common), 2 characters (most of what you'll see), 4 characters (idioms and phrases, and a lot of the 2 compound words like 路灯literally streetlight (and 3 character words like 方向盘 literally direction plate/steering wheel) are fairly understandable compounds if you know the hanzi. So you will quickly get to a point where you run into sentences where the unknowns are verbs or nouns or phrases you don't know (you may not know an adjective/descriptor but it's often followed by 的 地 so you'll know it's a part of that). A lot of the phrases will be 4 character chunks and be 2 words combined or 4 words combined. A lot of the nouns and verbs will be words acting on other words (verbs). Basically... the more you read the clearer it gets where the usual word boundaries are. I recommend more graded readers if the lack of spaces is bothering you, I think it's just a matter of getting used to it with practice (and graded readers will ensure there's less distractions and more focus on just parsing word phrase boundaries). Once you're used to word boundaries, it will not be as much of a struggle in harder materials. I'd imagine this is similarly true when applied to Japanese. Japanese grammar and conjugatjon and use of Kanji, use of particles, helps separate sentence elements. For me the tricky part is knowing when kana words are nouns and not conjugation, but I think i just haven't practiced enough.
For pronunciation of hanzi/words you're learning while extensively reading: many people solve that problem either by reading with audio for chinese (to hear the words), or doing listening study separately such as doing audio only extensive listening, or watching dramas with chinese subs so you get some reinforcement of hanzi wirh their pronunciation at some point. While you can guess the pinyin sometimes from the hanzi parts, it's not always right. So with chinese I think doing some additional listening including studying is just necessary for fully learning words. You can still learn to read plenty of words just extensively reading and figure a vague pronunciation for it (which is how I know a lot of more obscure English words I probably do not pronounce correctly). But yeah eventually if you think it's a word that would be useful to pronounce correct, you'll want to do some listening study. Either separately studying the sound of words you want to recognize in listening (with audiobooks, audio lessons, watching shows, convos, dictionary with audio lookup, srs, or reading with listening etc) or understand you may "relearn" a lot of the important words by first hearing them and later learning their spelling, or by first reading them and later finish learning them when you hear them in a podcast or show or conversation. (Even if you totally incorrectly guess a hanzi pronunciation, you'll eventually hear the word used again in some audio like an audiobook or show or convo and realize it's the hanzi word you learned, and you'll fix your pronunciation... the same way I couldn't pronounce futile or windowsill or rogue until I heard them a few times). As long as you are doing some reading and some listening activities, you will eventually pick up both aspects of words. You can speed it up by purposely studying both aspects together, but either way it will be okay. As a total beginner? Audio with graded readers, dialogue with transcripts and audio, shows with chinese subs, srs flashcards or apps with audio and text, will help you pick up both listening and reading recognition of a lot of the common words asap.
Tldr: extensive working does work for chinese too.
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Summary of study plan:
1. Going through glossika japanese 1 (by end of April hopefully we'll see)
2. Going through 300 pages (33%) of zhenhun (within a few weeks hopefully)
Future study plan:
1. If I get bored/done with glossika japanese, watching a full lets play of KH or FFX, or doing a Listening Reading Method experiment with a Japanese Duoreader story.
2. If I get done with zhenhun? Somehow? And I'm done with japanese glossika - switch to listen to Chinese Spoonfed audio files and FINISH THEM THIS TIME. If I'm not ready for audio study? Continue with zhenhun... or continue on reading another novel probably qi ye, tian ya ke, silent reading, or who knows honestly I have a lot of options. Lazy option: if my manhua I ordered come in, just read them uvu.